Governor Chris Christie Is a Meanie and a Bully

The news is out. Governor Chris Christie, he of the wide girth, publicly berated a public school teacher, Melinda Tomlinson, who dared to ask him, “Why are you portraying our schools as failure factories?” In response, Governor Christie responded, “What do you want? I’m tired of you people, do your job” according to Tomlinson. They had a brief argument over public schools.

What is this animosity Governor Big Mac has for teachers? The Crack Team did some digging and has found out that when Governor Big Mac was a young child in the 4th grade he had a crush on his teacher, which The Crack Team has found exclusive video. He stalked her to her home on Valentine's Day and professed his love to her. Sadly, he was rejected. The hurt lasted with him to this day.

First things first. I guess it is official now. I am now amongst another groups of "you people." Being a Jew, I knew when hearing "you people," there was a good chance either I, my family, or the tribe was being referenced. Now, when I hear those two words, I must now wonder if the conversation is about teachers as well. But, as one of The Crack Team's groupies shared with us, people say, "you people" to convey;

when they want to distance themselves. It's as bad as using a racial slur. It implies a sense of superiority.

We here at SBSB wonder of Governor Big Mac will ever go into the bowels of Camden, or West Orange, or Patterson and say this to people who come up to him and complain about the lack of food stamps, available jobs, and lack of housing? We doubt it. 

What about all those people a year later that still are homeless due to Sandy on the Jersey Shore? Would he say, "I'm tired of you people" to them? Again, we doubt it.


But Governor Big Mac is so concerned about choice and the horror of public school teachers, why then does he have no clue about New Jersey's private schools for disabled students?

the schools — together a more than $600 million industry — are paid for by the public but can spend in ways public schools cannot, sometimes fueling nepotism, high salaries, fancy cars, generous pensions and questionable business deals.

He reacted quite calmly. No bluster, no in your face, no bravado;

 "It was all news to me when I read it so I called over to Chris Cerf and said to him, ‘Put together a briefing for me and tell me what you think is going on,’ and he said he would," 

What we do enjoy is his pandering to Orthodox Jews;

He favors vouchers, expanding charter schools and extending state dollars for special education to Jewish day schools. 

Yeah, let's send the monies to Jewish day schools. We have all seen the disaster of the Kiryas Joel School District and the Yeshiva's in Rockland County NY, here, here, and here.

But let's go back to what started this brouhaha. Christie shared his ignorance by saying;

 “I would be happy to take as many dollars as possible away from failure factories that send children on a no-stop route to prison and to failed dreams, if we could take that money and put it into a place where those families have hope,"

Where are the failure factories? Upper Saddle River? Franklin Lakes? Short Hills? Tappan? Or does he just mean the schools within New Jersey's inner cities? For if that is what he means, he did not just dump on teachers, but the parents, the students, and the communities in Camden, Patterson, Newark, Jersey City, that see their schools as an oasis in the middle of chaos.

If every student was in a charter school or had access to vouchers in Camden, would the problems of Camden go away? The same in Newark or West Orange? No.

Where are the jobs? Why did the jobs leave New Jersey? What happened to all the manufacturing jobs in Patterson, Camden, and Newark? How many mayors have been indicted for graft in Atlantic City? How many politicians state wide have been arrested in New Jersey over the last ten years?

The problems will not be fixed by demonizing teachers, belittling public schools, cutting monies from public schools, opening charters, or picking fights with nice ladies who just ask a question.

There are so many reasons that students in areas of poverty struggle in school. But there are so many problems and so many students that we can't list all the reasons. The reasons are too numerous and each student is different.

Invest on the communities. Think about this, Zuckerberg's $100 million could have been spent on opening a supermarket in East Orange or Camden. It could have been used to create ball fields and soccer fields, it could have been used to clean up the inner city. But no, Zuckerberg wanted to look cool on Oprah and kiss Governor Big Mac's large butt.

The issues in the inner cities, and this goes for across the country, not just New Jersey, are numerous and complicated. The easy way to deal with the problems are to bully those that disagree with you and cut monies and shut things down. The hard way is ti actually invest and change the culture of the inner cities.

Governor White Castle needs to heed Mr Spock from Wrath of Khan, "It is easier to destroy than to create."